But First We'll Live
by HallieCB3
Summary: AU: One-shot story about Jyn and Cassian, and her post-Scarif perspective.


**But First We'll Live**

 _AN: Well, this movie broke me since I got attached to these two – see? I'm no Jedi! – I've been thinking how these two could have survived and how they would keep being part of the Rebellion. I strongly suspected they would not make it after Scarif since they were nowhere to be seen around in the Original Trilogy, but one can hope, right? Just a one-shot drabble of one of the potential might-have-been situations between these two, using the cave idea brilliantly used by Alexander Freed in his Rogue One novelisation._

 _Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters, material mentioned on this. All rights reserved to Lucasfilm._

So many years running from her past, from that cave she'd been abandoned in. But now she didn't feel like running away anymore.

Now she was embracing her fate, same as Cassian and her were holding on to each other on that beach. They were waiting for the worst to come, and hoping at the same time that someone else would finish what they'd started. Her eyes were filling up with tears as the horizon was getting brighter and brighter.

She woke up, with little beads of sweat covering her forehead. Again, the same bad dream.

There were restless waves crashing over the sand, while the green light of the Death Star tractor beam was about to obliterate the beach they were at.

She thought she would die that day in Scarif. But she didn't.

And yet, she was still in the same embrace. She looked aside and there was Cassian with her in that small bed, deeply asleep while he was still holding her, with his hand resting over her waist. Absentmindedly, she started softly tracing the skin on the back of his fingers.

It was real. She was alive. And so was he.

Pleasant memories of earlier that night started flooding her mind. They were way more real than the images from her nightmare. Their lack of clothes was enough evidence to prove the reality of it.

They went to Scarif on a suicide mission, and never thought they would make it alive back to the Rebellion.

But they did.

"I'm not used to people sticking around when things go bad."

Of course she wasn't. Either for own choice or for other reasons, all her life she had been abandoned by those she thought would be with her for longer. That's why she had shut herself to the outside world in a cave, her feelings, her hopes and fears: everything was protected deep inside her soul.

"Welcome home"

But then Rogue One happened. This rag-tag team of people that met just by designs of fate, and that had decided to follow her on a suicide quest.

And then Cassian happened to be there aside her, on that beach. And she realised he had come back for her several times already: in Jedha, in Eadu, and even in Yavin 4. He had chosen to look for her on Saw's place, rather than save himself since he already got the piece of info he needed from the Imperial defector. He had hesitated to pull the trigger and shoot her father, then risked himself to be killed in the crossfire between Rebels and Imperials just to rescue her, when she was facing the terrible pain of seeing her father again and losing him shortly afterwards, in a matter of minutes. And then he had volunteered and gathered a bunch of Rebel soldiers for her cause. She was not truly used to people doing that.

Her father. Even when time has helped her to overcome the grief about losing her father after finding out he hadn't abandoned her as she once thought, sometimes melancholy would take over and make her long for those times when she was a little girl, living a simple life with her parents. Galen Erso had gotten his revenge from the Empire and she had, in some way, finished what he started. Even though at that moment she was not sure that her message had been received and that the Death Star would be destroyed. She couldn't help smiling at the thought that, even when a Tatooine farm boy had delivered the one-in-a-million shot, her father's love for her had made that flaw possible for the Rebellion to take advantage of.

Great were the Rebellion's losses in that fateful day, on the Battle of Scarif. They were lucky not to be counted among them. And the only way she could think of to honour them was to keep fighting against the Empire.

With her eyes shut, she remembered that day when she and Cassian decided to continue in the fight, together, having recovered from their recent wounds.

"We made it, against all odds. If we keep fighting, there is no guarantee that we will see the end of the fight. We could not survive the next battle. Our chances might be all spent and we could not be back next time. We could die. But first... we will live."

And then he kissed her, softly. With all the strength he could muster from his fully recovered ribs, he embraced her and she no longer hid on her cave. There was no cave at all anymore.

Letting out a deep sigh, she hid her face on his neck and drifted back to sleep.


End file.
